In this YouTube video, veteran actor Aaron Marcus recounts an early‑career incident when, as an extra playing piano, he was reprimanded by an Academy‑Award‑winning star for not knowing the scene. The star’s harsh words left Aaron feeling embarrassed, but he resolved the situation by quickly consulting the script supervisor to understand the character motivations and scene context. Armed with that knowledge, he was able to converse appropriately with the star during the next take, which ended amicably. Aaron uses the story to illustrate two key lessons: (1) extras should proactively seek scene information—by asking PAs, ADs, or the script supervisor—to improve their performance and confidence; and (2) principal actors should treat all crew and background talent with basic kindness, even if they prefer to keep to themselves. He closes with a call for viewers to share their own uncomfortable set experiences, to subscribe, and to visit his website for further acting resources, including a bonus video on mastering home auditions.
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How could you not know what's going on in this scene? You're just throwing me off. Those are the words from an Academy Award-winning actor as we sat on a piano bench together during the first take on a— on the set of a feature film. Now, I was working as an extra, and it was at the very beginning of my career. And things got bad and I felt horrible. I'm going to explain what led up to that, that nightmare, how I handled things in a smart way so that things actually got resolved in a positive way, and that I made sure that this would never happen to me again. I'm sharing this, this story with you So that I'm hoping you will never experience something this uncomfortable. Okay, let's get started. Hi, my name is Aaron Marcus, and I've been an actor for 40 years. And once again, this is many years ago. I was working as an extra on this feature film, and one of the PAs, production assistant, asked, hey, can anybody here play piano? And I said, well, I can play some pretty basic things. He Perfect, perfect. So sit on the bench here. Now we were told very specifically never to talk to the star of this movie. I thought, okay. So I'm sitting at the bench and we're getting ready to shoot this scene, and the star sits down next to me, and I'm thinking, okay, I'm certainly not going to say anything to him. And they start doing the scene And it wasn't necessarily about him in the scene, but you do see us sitting there and he's starting to talk to me. Now, I'm not mic'd up or anything, and I didn't know what to say to him. First I was thinking, do I really say anything because he's talking to me? But we were told never to talk, so I figured, well, if he's talking to me— so I just started a conversation. I didn't really know what I was talking about. It had nothing to do with the movie because I don't know what's going going on. So that's when he snapped at me and started just being really nasty. And by the way, I'm not going to mention the, the actor's name. The person is no longer alive. I don't like speaking ill of, of the dead, and, and honestly, it doesn't matter. So the point is, he starts saying, you know, You have no idea what's going on here. And I said, you're right, I don't. He goes, well, we're breaking for lunch, which we did. He said, you better find out what's going on. I said, okay. So I'm a little bit lost as an extra. They don't give us a script to look at ahead of time. It is true, sometimes, sometimes a production assistant, a PA, sometimes the first AD, first assistant director might share information about the scene. We didn't, we didn't have a clue. I knew it was in somebody's house, and so I decided, hey, maybe I'll try to grab the script supervisor really quickly before everybody leaves the room and ask her. So I walked over to her and I explained the situation. I said, you know, this actor needs me to know what's going on, and could you just give me an idea of what's happening here? What's going on with his character? What's happening with some of the other actors in the scene? And she explained it to me. I thought, okay, now I understand what's happening. So we sit down after lunch and we're starting to do another take, and now I'm able to talk to him as the character. I know what's going on. I know what's happening to his career. Some bad things are starting to happen, and we had a lovely conversation. And when we finished You know, there was nothing about, hey, sorry, I kind of jumped at you. It was just like, thank you. That was, that was the extent of it. And I wanted to share that with you for a couple of reasons. Number one, yeah, look, if you can find out what's going on in a scene, it's always really helpful. But like I said before, you know, as an extra, we're not necessarily given that information, but If you can ask, it might be really helpful to you personally. I think it's going to be a lot more enjoyable for you as an actor as well. And the, the other thing too that I just wanted to mention is this. Look, for those of you who are doing principal work, those of you who might be doing principal work, maybe being the star of a project, I do have a request for you. Please treat everybody on the set kindly. And I'm not saying you have to love everybody, you have to walk around and do selfies or take, you know, sign autographs or anything like that. That's not, you know, part of the job description. You don't have to. And I completely— look, I've been in situations as a principal actor in projects where I do want to isolate myself. from other people. It was a tough scene coming up. I didn't want to just start walking around and talking to people, and I didn't really want to deal or interact with anyone until after I finished shooting the scene. So I completely get that. But there is a difference between setting yourself apart from everybody to just being nasty to somebody. I mean, maybe this guy was just so out of touch With reality of not having any understanding of what extras are doing. And sometimes we know nothing about what's going on, and there's just no need to treat other people poorly like that. So I just wanted to ask, please just treat other people in a kind way, even if you don't want to interact with them. And I also have to ask if you have ever experienced something on a set where it was uncomfortable, somebody said something or did something that was— just made things difficult for you, please, you don't have to mention any names, but share it with us and let us know what you did. How did you resolve things? Or maybe they didn't get resolved, but let us know. Share your comments here so that way we can learn from you. If you found this helpful, don't forget, subscribe, click the notification bell, share it with other people. That's really helpful. And I did want to mention before I finish up here, if you go to my website, howtoactamodel.com, you you can sign up to be on my email list. I send out great acting and modeling information every week. And when you do that, if you scroll to the bottom of the website, there's a little form you can fill out. I'm going to send you a great bonus video. It's 6 Secrets to Mastering Home Auditions. It's going to be really helpful to you. Anyhow, I'm— it's like a blast from the past, although I don't know if it's really a blast, but an experience from the past. And I'm really happy that I'm able to share this with you. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.
